Best New Band 2012

10 local acts that Portland’s music insiders think you should hear.

Sounds like: A
weird dream where Stereolab hangs out with Enya around a campfire on
the banks of a river where yellow water runs over chunks of black coal.

New York isn’t ready for the New Age. It’s too busy, too
expensive, too removed from the natural world. Or so it seems to Pure
Bathing Culture. Back in Brooklyn, the duo of Daniel Hindman and Sarah
Versprille ran on pizza and subway fare. Last year they moved to
Portland and got into natal charts and crystals.

“We’ve been
super-influenced by a lot of West Coast New Age spirituality, things
that we weren’t really looking into,” Hindman says. “We’ve been
super-influenced by astrology, and the tarot has become a muse.”

“I’m sure a lot of it
exists on the East Coast, in New York, but people on the West
Coast...seem to have more space for that type of thought,” Versprille
says. “[In New York], there’s a lot of people competing for resources
and it’s pretty intense.”

Hindman and
Versprille seem comfortably settled into a quieter life in the Southeast
Portland house they share with Versprille’s cousin and her elderly
miniature poodle. The house’s open upper floor is a studio and rehearsal
space that “doesn’t exist” in New York, with plush yellow couches, a
big chunk of orange calcite (“It’s very calming,” Versprille says) and
the spiritualist books that inform the EP the band is releasing at the
end of this month.

Hindman, a lanky man
with curly brown hair, is originally from Delaware. Versprille, who has
sharp bangs, big glasses and occasionally slips a hard vowel into her
speech, is from Rochester in upstate New York.

“Some of this music
was written in Brooklyn, but I feel like it really developed here,”
Versprille says. “We decided we wanted to explore it, but we didn’t have
the space or the time because we had to work extra jobs.”

There’s lots of space
on Pure Bathing Culture’s self-titled debut EP, a record with obvious
parallels to dream-poppy Baltimore duo Beach House. “Lucky One” has
Versprille’s ephemeral vocals floating through subtly hypnotic, bloopy
drums. Layers of guitar and vocals give “Ivory Coast,” a song the band
says is about being obsessed with your muse, uncanny depth. “Silver
Shore’s Lake” has a touch of Simply Red-style ’80s blue-eyed soul under
layered electro haze. So far, Pure Bathing Culture has played only eight
shows, the first in January at Doug Fir Lounge, and yet it has enough
buzz to land on this list.

Part of that may be
due to the popularity of another band it plays in, Andy Cabic’s folk-pop
project Vetiver. Touring with Vetiver, Pure Bathing Culture met lauded
producer and musician Richard Swift, a recent Shins recruit operating
out of Cottage Grove, who encouraged the band to come to Portland.

Hanging here, Hindman and Versprille have had time to read and think about new things—like the zodiac.

“I
think of the signs of the zodiac almost as like collected folk wisdoms
that have been created from centuries and centuries of humans observing
other humans,” Hindman says.

Having
time to observe and ponder, he figures, is how this esoteric knowledge
was developed in the first place. “People didn’t have anything to do
besides lay on their back and look at the stars,” he says. “Before the
Internet, and before this modern age we live in, people were much more
attentive. They were seeing things that we don’t look at now.”

Versprille stops
short of calling it practical: “It’s not so much that I want to read my
horoscope and predict the future, it’s more of an interesting
intellectual pursuit.”

But there is a Pure
Bathing Culture ethos, the band says, something that’s developed since
arriving in Portland that channels the spirit of this place.

“If
we had any message in our music, it would probably be that you should
take yourself seriously, take your relationships seriously—don’t miss
it. Don’t miss this opportunity,” Hindman says. “We’re just interested
in new forms of spirituality and ways of connecting with something
beyond everyday life that gives meaning to why we’re all here.”

As pop music goes, this is an ambitious purpose. Pure Bathing Culture takes it on seriously, but cheerfully.

"In the low usage areas, we found that our vehicles sit idle four times longer, ultimately affecting overall vehicle availability for the Portland membership base, as well as parking for the Portland community."

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